NEW YORK: Tales of the Gotham Hoods

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Engineer Dennis J. Walsh of the firm of Sanderson & Porter reported last week on a recent survey of ports and shipping. New York has lost coastwise trade since World War II, and has barely held its own in foreign trade with 53% of the nation's total of cargoes. Baltimore, on the other hand, has advanced from 10% to 15%, New Orleans from 13% to 17%.

The New York waterfront—like the hills of Tennessee and the old West—is best understood through its folk tales. They are extremely hard to collect. They are sung from a witness chair rather than before a campfire, and their heroes and/or villains are so expendable that most bards and/or stool pigeons can remember only a few. But last week the New York State Crime Commission procured the services of two witnesses who were able to bridge almost 20 years of noisy pierside warfare.

A Load of Furs. Gangster Francis Smith (who was hustled down under guard from Green Haven Prison, where he is doing seven-to-ten years for highjacking) matter-of-factly admitted doing a lot of shooting himself back in the 1930s. He told of having set himself up as a pier boss after ending a hitch in prison. It was easy. With three other hoodlums, he "decided to take a pier ... off two brothers by the name of Dillon, which we did. It was the Italian Line, Pier 59, North River. They went off without any trouble. They knew what would happen ..."

But Smith & Co. were soon involved in an uproar that kept the waterfront echoing like a shooting gallery. "One morning, myself, George Keeler and John Harvey and Thomas Porter were cruising up the waterfront. We spied a truck that was loaded with furs. Keeler wanted to go and speak to the driver there. 'He must have something good there, and I can get him to give it to us.' . . . He comes back and he says, 'There's a load of furs worth $100,000 . . . and he's going to give us the truck.' [But] while we were waiting for the truck to pull away from the dock, four other men highjacked it ...